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Sunday, January 29, 2012

Weekly 4e Homebrew: Multiple Personality Detriment

Every Sunday, I'll have a completely homebrewed Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition element that you can use in your games. I do take requests so you can either post a comment here, email me at thatrobedguy@hotmail.com with the subject "Homebrew Request", or send me a tweet on Twitter (@brannonhutchins) with the hashtag #weekly4e.

Have you ever wanted to play several characters at once? Well now you can with the newly constructed Detriment of Multiple Personality Disorder!

While actually a rare mental disease and is often confused by name with schizophrenia, Multiple Personality Disorder can offer very interesting roleplaying opportunities in your Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition campaign. It can be even more interesting if the rest of the party, or even the players, don't know about it.

Creating a Character With DID
Before we continue, DID stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is a more official name for the disease. I'm here to educate. If I'm wrong, I'm sure our hobby's local psychologist, the Id DM, is more than willing to correct me on the matter.

If you choose to use this Detriment, do not worry about the roleplaying ramifications of having vastly different ability scores. Perhaps the other personalities don't know how to use their natural Strength properly or even understand just how much Constitution they truly have. If their physical stats are stronger, perhaps this new found Strength comes from an understanding of the body rather than actual getting more muscle.

However, if you wish to have the same physical ability scores to properly reflect a character with this mental condition, I would first suggest that your build your character with the point-buy system (Method 2 found on page 78 of the Essentials Rules Compendium). Ensure that the physical stats (Strength, Constitution, Dexterity) are what you want for all the personalities. From there, use the remaining points to create each personalities' mental stats (Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma).

Remove Affliction Ritual
Make the following changes to account for this Detriment and updated rules:

Update the Difficulty Classes to the following: 8 or lower, 9-15, 16-23, 24-29, 30 or higher

Add to the "8 or lower" effect that it permanently destroys the primary personality

Add to the "9-15" effect that the player needs to make a saving throw. If failed, the primary personality is destroyed.

Add to the "16-23" effect that one of the additional personalities is destroyed. If there is still a remaining personality, the character only receives half the rewarded XP and is given the other half once the remaining additional personality is removed.

Add to the "24-29" effect that all additional personalities are destroyed.

Add to the "30 or higher" effect that all additional personalities are destroyed.

Designer Notes: No time for notes this week. I has to play Skyrim.

Edit: It would appear that TheIdDM is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. Fix'd.